No one was saying it was an alien, but this photo has been going around again – it showed up on one of our Facebook feeds -- which is random enough since none of us is a UFO buff. But it caused at least one other publication to wonder – UFO?

We thought we’d have some fun and sent an email to NASA and had a headline in mind. … you know, we’ve all seen things in the sky that make us wonder just what the hell it could have been. And NASA takes awhile to write back sometimes …

“This photo comes directly from The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth, a government website operated by NASA … Here is the homepage, as you can see it has a .gov URL and is currently not up to date due to the fact that it’s a government website, and the government is currently shutdown. It’s very interesting that they would allow a photo like this to be put up on the website. … [In bold] Please keep in mind that a UFO stands for “Unidentified Flying Object.” I am not claiming that this particular UFO is extraterrestrial in origin …”

The writer then goes on to link to two astronauts who have spoken about UFOs and a brief video to introduce the uninitiated to the whole UFO scene … all three are in the gallery above.

But then our keen journalistic instincts kicked in and we found an “answer.” Mind you, this is what the GOVERNMENT says their picture shows (though if you go through the gallery of images clipped from the super-hi-res-version of the photo above, you might be inclined to believe them):

“A small piece of thermal insulation tile floats in space near the Shuttle Columbia. The cloudy surface of the earth is used as a background.”

"After many delays, Columbia finally landed at Edwards AFB at 5:59 am PST, on 18 January 1986," according to Wikipedia (with confirmation). "The mission lasted a total of 6 days, 2 hours, 3 minutes, and 51 seconds. STS-61-C was the last successful Space Shuttle flight before the Challenger disaster, which occurred on 28 January 1986, only 10 days after Columbia's return."

In 2003, Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry.

Space.com summarizes:

On Feb. 1, 2003, space shuttle Columbia broke up as it returned to Earth, killing the seven astronauts on board. NASA suspended space shuttle flights for more than two years as it investigated the disaster.

An investigation board determined that a large piece of foam fell from the shuttle's external tank and fatally breached the spacecraft wing. This problem with foam had been known for years, and NASA came under intense scrutiny in Congress and in the media for allowing the situation to continue.

What a weird trail the Internet led us down ....

UPDATE Nov. 5, 2013:

Our strange email exchange with NASA about this object that took place over the past week-plus:

To JSC-Earthweb on Oct. 29 just before we found the answer on our own:

No UFO buff here ... but seeing this image going around and wonder if you guys have a quick explanation.

Thank you for your message. The object is most likely a piece of space debris released from the Shuttle Payload Bay. Small, unsecured objects introduced into the Bay during prelaunch processing of the orbiter – such as pen covers and baseball caps – could be released when the Bay doors opened for mission activities.

The Low Earth Orbit region (up to 2000km above the Earth's surface), in which the Space Shuttle operated and International Space Station operates today, has the highest concentration of space debris. While much of this debris is comprised of spent rocket boosters and defunct satellite fragments traveling at high velocities relative to the International Space Station (10-11 km/sec), objects moving slowly enough to be photographed by the crew are of local origin, and are traveling at relative speeds less than 1 meter/sec. This type of space debris typically presents no danger to the spacecraft or crew.